Film Society: Fur

Fur was my favorite movie out of all the Film Society movies. The plot was so interesting. Nicole Kidman was fantastic in this movie they was she portrayed Diane Arbus was amazing. Arbus was an amazing person she had so many ideas she was finally able to make a reality. She turned her back to her stable life with her husband and kids to pursue what she really wanted. Arbus was the cookie cutter wife until Lionel moved in. She became the total opposite of what a good wife was supposed to be. Lionel turns out to be a human werewolf who makes wigs with his hair. Arbus becomes enthralled with him. Once she starts hanging out with Lionel Arbus's inner freak really comes out. She starts meeting Lionel's circus friends which are all "freaks." Soon she starts forgetting about her family and spending all her time with Lionel. Lionel is able to let Arbus live the life she really wants. Arbus falls in love with Lionel. She soon finds out he is about to die, his lungs are slowly disintegrating. Lionel really helps Arbus become reborn again. She is not held back by the rules of society any longer. One part in the film I enjoyed was when her husband grew a beard to try and compete with Lionel for Arbus. The ending was very sad, it was nice that Lionel was able to go out how he wanted to.

April 22 Readings

It was a nice change to go from all the poems to these short stories. I really enjoyed all the poems but the readings this week was a very nice change. I enjoyed all the authors and their writing styles. I really enjoyed Thomas Pynchon's story. He included a lot of detail in his writing about everything. It allowed me to feel as if I was where he was writing about. All of the details added to the fullness of the story.
Raymond Carver's story Cathedral was very interesting to me. The ending was perfect I really like how the blind man was able to teach Robert not to feel smothered by his surroundings. The blind man was able to teach Robert how to enjoy his life more.
All the readings were very in depth and touching. Each one had a point to make. It amazed me at how much detail each had. When a story has a lot of detail I am able to make a clearer picture of what the author is trying to portray in my mind. My favorite story from the reading was Lullaby by Leslie Marmon Silko. It was a very touching story and I really enjoyed how she ended the story with the song that had been passed down.

Irish Folk Music Concert

Mairtin de Cogain and Jimmy Crowley were great! I really enjoyed the music they played. I really could not understand what they were saying half the time though. They were both very entertaining. Mairtin's story about the car was very humorous. My favorite song they played was the one about the Titanic. I enjoyed the music that went along with the story they were telling. Crowley was very talented in playing the instruments he did. They both were very good entertainers. I am going to put The Wind That Shakes the Barley on my Netflix queue because I enjoyed de Cogain so much.

Spoken Word Poet Mike McGee

I LOVED Mike McGee. His way of interacting with the crowd and laid back personality made it a relaxed atmosphere. Every single one of his poems was amazing. My favorite was about death and McGee having an eating contest to see who would win McGee's soul. He was also very funny almost all of the poems he performed contained weird comparisons and humorous word choices. He performed from 8-10:30 it did not feel like I was there for that long. Time flew by as he told amazing poem after poem. I thought he had a much lighter subject base than the last poet. I'm glad I got to see him perform.

April 15 Readings

I enjoyed reading all of the authors this week. Each had their own special quality that made their writings peak my interest.
Adrienne Rich's Storm Warnings really appealed to me. The way she described the situation was very relatable to me. I have seen many hurricanes and road them through waiting to survey the damage outside. The last line is so true " These are the things that we have learned to do who live in troubled regions" it becomes second nature to close up the house when bad weather comes. At the beginning she even talks about knowing the weather better than the barometer. The words she uses to describe the weather create strong images in my mind. In her other poem Snapshots of a Daughter-in- Law she is kind of like a contemporary Plath. The last stanza was bittersweet it alluded that there were changes to come but one is always being reborn into new ideas and identities. The poem had a strong feminist air to it. Rich explores the advancement of women through time. She ends with the beginning in a way. With women being reborn through out their life it creates a stronger connection with their past. My favorite poem of hers was Diving Through the Wreck. Rich acknowledges women's fight for civil rights in the past as well as the present. There is a strong tie to the unconscious embedded into diving into the unknown. She also creates a since of problems with the images of the wreck, knife, and being below the surface. By her finding the wreck it creates a sense of recovery which could be linked to the recovery of women's rights. Rich creates a myth for women to look upon when needing a sign of hope.
Micheal S. Harper has a writing style that infuses the jazz structure with writing. He is very spontaneous in his writing with a rhythmic and music openness. He also writes a lot about past events. Harper celebrates African American culture in all of his writings. In American History Harper uses lots of history to create a tragic poem. He speaks of slaves coming to American to be sold and little girls being killed. All of his poems were very interesting and created a different view point of situations.
Komunyakaa like Harper had a jazz like structure to his poems. His writings were very personal and in a way confessional. The structure was not like other writers during that time. He had a very unique way of looking at things.
Li- Young Lee had an emphasis on material things with specific pin points. He was able to make me hungry when I was reading Eating Alone and Eating Together. Like Hemingway he uses sensual imagery to grab your attention and switch from one thing to another. Lee uses the "icy metal spigot" to change from present to past. He is also a lot like Bishop, he writes about things and starts with things in his poetry.

After This By: Alice McDermott

I did not really enjoy After This. I read Child of My Heart prior to reading After this and enjoyed it a lot more. After this seemed to be a bunch of short stories linked together by the same characters. Each "short story" was very good but it made the book disjointed. The storied jumped from decades creating a burr of time. There was a lack of structure during the story I felt as if there was no high point to the story. I did enjoy the repetition of the piano player she used. The tone was bittersweet. The intermixing of sweetness and sorrow created hope and possibility. With hope there is a twist of a sadder but wiser view that is taken. This most defiantly is an anti-war novel. Along with the anti-war theme the American Dream is put into question. McDermott hints towards the American Dream just being a mythical creature never meant to be caught. The main theme I got from After This was to always have hope.

Readings for 4/1

Sylvia Plath sparked my interest this week. Her poems were a revealing peep into her life. She used the Holocaust a lot in both of her poems. I thought that was very interesting. She is able to create a strong image in readers mind's with her strong wording. I really enjoyed Child! The way she starts off with a kind of innocence then at the end BAM the real world is there. She makes the world feel so empty when she says "Not this troublous wringing of hands, this dark ceiling without a star." I hate when I cannot see stars in the sky. I get excited when I am able to see a constellation in the sky. With that one line she is able to take a certain part of life away. In Daddy Plath shows that she has serious issues with her father. It was interesting to read how she expressed her feelings about her father.
James Baldwin's story Good Country People was really entertaining. It paralleled with The Confidence Man by having a con artist. The last paragraph of the story where the guy takes her leg and tells her "one time I got a woman's glass eye this way" made me crack up. She ended up getting taken advantage of instead of her taking advantage of the guy. Things just went down hill for her. She lost her leg and her man friend.
Elizabeth Bishops poem Fish was very entertaining. She was able to admire every detail of a fish like he was a god. She describe everything on the fish with dramatic wording that lets the reader feel as if they are seeing the fish for themselves. I enjoyed how she described all the hooks as "a five- haired beard of wisdom" it was a very intriguing way to describe past escapes from being caught.
All-in-all I enjoyed this weeks reading very much they were are similar but different in big ways.